Having an affair will add “Passion” to your life. When movies and books present infidelity, one of the things that they play up is how it will add passion. Passion is offered to the public as something that is desirable and worthy. Many people will express a willingness and desirability to add some passion to their lives, until they realize what passion actually involves.

The word “Passion” comes from the latin word, passio which means ‘to suffer’. So to have passion means to be involved with something to the point it brings suffering. The word passion sounds better than suffering, so it is often used as a way to disguise and minimize the pain.

Consider the things that you are passionate about. In the true sense of the word, being passionate means that you are willing to suffer for the sake of those things. You are willing to go through the suffering. Pain becomes secondary when it is something that you are ‘passionate’ about. Much like an artist willing to suffer for their work, passionate people suffer for the sake of things that are important for them.

It is not by accident that the Easter plays are often referred to as “Passion Plays”. These plays are often portrayals of the suffering endured associated with the Easter season and its celebration.

The word ‘passion’ also carries with it some other connotations. Although often associated with zeal, eagerness and desire, there are other aspects as well. Among those other aspects is the connotation of extreme agitation to the point of being moved to anger. So when we are passionate about things, these are the items that can also trigger angry agitation. The things and people we are passionate about, are also the things and people that can easily anger us. That anger carries with it extreme excitability. In everyday language, these are the things that we are extremely touchy about. That touchiness can escalate to intense anger. That intense anger is often described as being “passionate”.

Another aspect of passion that is often overlooked is that of passivity. The root word that passion comes from, passio, is also the same root word for passivity. What does this common root word mean?

The common root of passio carries with it the idea that the things that we are passionate about operate on us. We have a passive relationship with the objects of our passion. Although we may think we control them, in actuality they control us. Anything that happens to them acts upon us. We as the ‘passionate’ or ‘passive’ ones simply react to those things acting upon us. What this means is that when it comes to things we are passionate about, we are ‘out of control’.

So with the closer look at what ‘passion’ means, affairs definitely add suffering, intense emotions to the point of being out of control and oftentimes control us more than we control them. Having an affair will definitely add passion to one’s life. If only affairs carried with them the same laws about truth in advertising that applies to other products, then people would actually see what they are signing up for.